Wii

We would like a 'Wii' in the house.

Several people we know have one and we, as a family, have had many a go on it. We have played bowling, tennis, even ski jumping with the Wii Fit Board, oh and tightrope walking and hula hooping!

At the weekend we played with the one my brother has, everyone had a great time, even Grandma was bowling some 'strikes' although she did say she would rather be playing the 'real thing'.

So on Monday, Alex and I crawled around several of the large shops that have them and checked out prices and deals available.

Quite interesting the difference in price in different shops, but in the end pretty much the same.

Noel Leeming did more or less the best deal. They will match the price of anyone or let you take it over 12 months interest free.

Now we would like:

The Console

Battery Charger

Wii Fit Board

And game for the Wii Fit Board.

We would also like to get a 2nd Nunchuk and a 2nd Remote Control straight away as well, then you can play 2 people against each other.
We are not in any hurry to purchase this, so are waiting for a good deal to come up.

We have decided that we will get this for everyone's Birthday and some of Christmas, seeing as we have Ben's, Mine and Steve's Birthday in the next 3 months, also Father's Day and of course Christmas. We don't actually know what to get for everyone for gifts, so even though we will get Ben something little for the actual day, we will explain that this is part of his present too. I will get Steve something very little, worth about $2 for Father's Day and his Birthday, but we won't go all out because we will have the Wii.

We do have some vouchers for this store, so that is nice. So now we will just sit and wait.

So if anyone is wondering what to get Ben for his Birthday or even me for that matter, then some vouchers for Noel Leeming would be nice, but could we have them in advance so we can use them towards our family gift now please?

Keys

Yesterday, after collecting Ben from his friends house, we headed home.
I had an appointment at 3, so with plenty of time to spare, Ben and I got ready and left.
Unfortunately he was talking to me and I got distracted!

2 minutes later I realise that we were stood outside the back door, with the door locked, the alarm on and 'NO' keys!
Yep, that is right, no keys to unlock the door with, no keys to drive the car with and no means of getting back into the house.
Luckily my appointment was not far away, so in the 10 minutes we had left we were able to walk to it.
We called Steve and told him he would have to take the bus home, as we couldn't come and collect him!

Luckily, but unluckily we ended up having a very long (like 45 mins) wait for my appointment. Not sure what they were doing for it to take so long to wait?
Then we managed to keep busy by stopping in the local Kids Book Store and then we went and collected Alex from Daycare, but we loitered for half an hour. They were more than happy to have us stay, so I read books to Alex whilst we waited.
In fact, I think I ended up with 3 kids sat around my feet whilst I read the book.

Finally Steve text to say he was home and we wandered off round the corner home and into our nice warm house.

Right Thing

Today Alex and I ran some errands.
We ended up at the supermarket and picked up a few little things we needed.
1 of the things we got was a little bag a lollies.

However at the checkout, Alex decided to help himself to a box of Smarties!
I however did not notice the box until he showed them to me at the car.

And I made him do the right thing.....and take them back!
I know cruel mean mummy, but oh so morally right mummy!

So we walked back in, with me explaining about taking without paying and that he had no money so couldn't have them. Then I made him give them to the lady and say 'sorry'.
She however looked at me at little surprised at first, until I explained how he had taken them and we hadn't paid for them. Then she smiled and said 'thank you'

I have no idea if he understood what we did, but at least I can hope he might.

Swings

Yesterday, Ben had a Teacher Only Day at school.
This meant that there was no school. Ok they did give us about 3 months warning that the day was coming up!
Unfortunately for us, it just fell into place that neither Steve nor I could get the day off work, well I couold only get half the day, so one of Ben's classmates kindly had him over for the morning.

It sounds like he had a great time, playing at the park, eating Ice Cream and having McDonalds for lunch.
Unfortunately, whilst at the park Ben decided to swing a swing, or more like, push the swing but hum, he kinda forget to move when the swing swung back....!
He now has the biggest fat lip ever!
He has also managed to graze off the skin on the front of his lip with the rope from the swing.
So his mouth looks a horrible mess at the moment and I think it is only going to get worse before it gets better, because it is going to get all dry with the scab and this will bug him for a while.

You can see the split in his lip where he was so lucky because if it had split more then I think he would have had to have had stitches in his lip!

But he had a great morning with his friend from school, so he is not bothered at all.

Birthday Wishes

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Bithday to you,
Happy Birthday dear brother
Happy Birthday to you.......

If you are going to be X amount old today....then that makes me....!? Hum No I am not that old...am I??
Oh well, have a great day, catch up with you soon to give you your present.

Bag Swap

Over the last week or so, I have managed to come across several new blogs to follow.

PS I Quilt and Cornbread and Beans Quilting Weblog, to name a few.

One of these wonderful blogs had a step by step tutorial the other day on how to make a little quilt bag. So I popped on over and checked it all out. It was awesome, so simple and easy, even for fragile people like me who haven't seen the inside of her quilt bag for several years now! Man am I glad my 2 boys are getting bigger by the day, hopefully I am now counting down the months not years until I get to have an hour here and there to start up my quilting and sewing again.

At the end of the tutorial it explained about a little bag swap that is about to take place.

Mmhh I thought, this would be a nice little project to undertake.

So I skipped on over and signed my name up for it.

Thought I might do something up in New Zealand patterned fabric?

So if you fancy a wee tutorial on making a little quilt bag, then pop over to PS I Quilt and check it out.

If you fancy joining the swap, then click on the picture and skip on over there as well. Registration closes 20th August, postage has to be by Oct 6.

Have fun

Win

This morning I won a book on the radio.

I won the new book out on Michael Jackson - Life of a Legend.

They were talking about IAE (Internet Alta Ego's)

In simple terms, what does it say if you put your name in Google.

If your name was 'Jessica Martin' and you put that in Google, would it tell you anything about you or about someone else named the same. And what exciting thing does it say?

Well I happen to know that if you put my husbands name in he apparently went over Niagra Falls in a barrel!

So I called and told them this. They Googled him and thought it was a hoot. After several other people calling in with names and stories they choose my husbands IAE as the best and so I won the book, or he won it or maybe we both won it!? Anyway, not exactly a book we really need or want. So not actually sure what we are going to do with a book about Michael Jackson?

Sewing

When I was a little girl, I picked up the sewing bug from my mum.

She had always been sewing and embroidering for as long as I could remember. She even did an evening class in sewing at one point and got a little certificate etc, can't actually remember what the course was, I was only 6 when she did it! But I do remember her going to college and I even remember going to the college to see her there.

Anyway, when I was about 8 or 9, I finally got the privilege of having my own sewing box.

I got it for Christmas. It was an old style Mothercare Baby Box, just like the one in the picture on the right. It was a big plastic box that was originally used for keeping baby products for nappy changing time in, but mum, being as creative as she was, turned this one into a sewing box for me.

It came with a nice amount of blue aida, needles and some DMC threads, just enough basic colours for me to do something with. There was also a little pattern book in there. Now everything was geared towards cross stitch, so that is where my sewing history begins....Cross Stitch.

I still have most of the first projects I worked on, even still have the book, oh and the threads.

Below are a few pictures of some of my first projects.....

I also did a lovely cross stitch of an Easter Bunny pulling a cart of presents. It is so cute. When I find it I will take a picture and post it sometime.
Over the years I have worked on many projects, I was always making things for people to celebrate weddings, birthdays and babies being born.

My brother also drew a picture of a car on graph paper one time, and for Christmas, I made the design up in cross stitch and then framed both the picture and the cross stitch picture together and gave it as his present. Hopefully he still has it somewhere at his house so will try and get a picture of that as well.

This also means that I have a very special box of my own now.

Mum and Dad brought it for my Christmas Present in 1996. It was brought from a little sewing shop in Lincoln, Great Britain whilst Mum and I were there shopping at the Christmas Evening Festival they held.

And when you open the lid

It is filled with all my DMC Threads that I have purchased over the years, and yes they are all on their own little card and yes they are all numbered and in order! (The box came empty by the way, I have filled it since getting it)

I also still have my first DMC Thread Colour Chart that you could tick to show what you had at home and what you still needed to buy if you were ever lucky enough to have a few coins left over to buy new threads with whilst a student. I obviously did ok!

As you can see, I have most of the threads, well this was the list from about 1990!

DMC have since brought out many new ranges of threads and colours, so now I have realised that I have a few more to collect! So I will have to get another box for all the treads I still don't have.

So even though I am now dabbling in quilting, Cross Stitch will always be my first love.

Stamping

My good friend Wendy, asked me the other day if I wanted to go to a stamping party with her? I love crafts so why not.

Had an enjoyable afternoon actually.

Not about to rush out and start stamping as a craft, but interesting to see what other people are so hooked on.

We had the wonderful pleasure of making 2 little projects at the party.

A little cover for a wee notebook and a card.

As the lady hosting said, 'even though we are being directed in what to do, it is amazing that everyone has put their own little twist on things, so everything looks a little different!'

Here are pictures of my efforts for the afternoon.....

A little summer card

Pizza

My 2 go on about having pizza for dinner quite regularly.

We are lucky enough to have a Pizza Hut all of 300m round the corner, but we do not use it!

I keep convincing myself that the next visit will be good and each time it gets worse.

So the last time we went, I decided that if I ever think we should go again, then I will kick myself. I just have to keep remembering that 'It will not work, it will not get better there!'

It doesn't really matter though, because we make awesome home made pizzas.

So I do have pizza on our menu at least once every 4 weeks.

Tonight was one of the nights, and with my trusty sidekick, we had homemade pizza for dinner.

We even manage to make it so everyone gets their own individual pizza, so everyone is happy at the end of dinner.

Sign Off

I have noticed that with all these customised blogs that are now appearing, they have cute little sign offs at the end of each post.

Seeing as I put all this blog together myself, then it has been a little bit of trial and error to achieve what I want.

So finally I have now got this......

My own little customised sign off.

Yea to me, I did it all by myself.

Wedding

A wedding that I think no guest will ever forget.

Thanks to Mary at Owlhaven for showing me this one.

Pikelets and Pancakes

The boys love pikelets or pancakes.

There doesn't seem to be a weekend that goes by without them asking for them for breakfast.

Now we don't always oblige with making them, depends on the time they have asked us as to whether we have enough time to make them!

But last weekend, well I had all the time in the world, so pikelets is what they got for breakfast.

And if I do say so myself, they were the best I have made for ages.

So whilst I was stood there making up the batch, I decided to get creative......!

The first pikelets we all got to eat was our initial.

Who says you can't have fun with breakfast?

Gardens

As I have mentioned before, many times, we have the wonderful pleasure of having the Hamilton Gardens not too far away. Close enough to be able to get in the car when ever we want and take a stroll through a different part of them each time.

There are loads of places to walk and wander. We all have our favorite parts.

Yesterday, we took a quick walk there because the boys really needed to get away from the house for a while.

The sun was shinning and the gardens as ever were beautiful.
The boys had got themselves dress that morning, and they couldn't have been dressed differently if they tried! Ben was well prepared with long trousers and a jumper, it is winter here after all. Alex on the other hand decided that if the sun was shinning then it must be summer! Shorts and no jumper. Me, well I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, warm in the sun but very cold in the shade. Alex just happily ran around and obviously never felt the cold!

We took a different path then usual. The boys got very excited deciding which way to go.

Unfortunately as we came to this bridge, Steve managed to mention whether there was a troll underneath it! That then meant that he had to go before Ben, who was a little hesitant!

So I snapped a few pictures for you to see. Nearly a year ago we got married in the Greenhouse here. I still love visiting it to see what flowers are blooming. The colours are always so amazing.

Does anyone actually know what this flower is? I think it is lovely, reminds me of a cabbage!

Hope you had as fun a weekend as we did.

Have a great week.

Advent Swap

Ok, so I know Christmas still feels so far away, and I have to agree, it is.

In fact if you look at my side bar on the right, you will see a little Christmas countdown, quite frightening actually when you look and see how many days it tells you.

Anyway, my mum told me about an Advent Swap that she is getting involved with, so I went and checked it all out.

Looks like a little bit of fun, and the more I read about it, then the more I decided that in fact I think I might be able to manage this.

So I signed myself up. Maybe I need a little challenge in my life at the moment.

You do not need to be an addict on sewing etc to join in this swap, if you read the rules correctly then you can put anything in as the little advent presents, ok sewing related does help, but a few fun things and niks and naks will make the giving all so much more fun.

So if you fancy having a little bit of fun over the next couple of months either making some little gifts (25 of them) or just collecting little gifts to swap with someone somewhere in the world, then this is the fun for you. And just think......at the end of it you too will recieve a little gift box of 25 gifts ready for the countdown to Christmas at the end of November.

BlogHop

I am always interesting in finding new blogs to check out.

See how the other half are living, how they are changing the world, one little word at a time.

Find out what works for them and how I can instigate that idea into my life.

I already have some amazing blogs that I follow, but this is a big world and there are others, so this week I have taken part in the Bloghop.

This is a blog party that allows you to go out there and make new friends.

So if you want to connect with some new people, then hop on over and say hi to everyone.

For everyone visiting me, well hello from New Zealand and welcome to my world. Please stay a while and see what my family have been up to recently.

I keep you up to date with what we have been doing, anything I feel like blogging about and just lots of fun things.

Leave me a comment if you visit because I love to visit people too, so I will come on over to see you later.

Competition

Steve's office area has started having cooking competitions.
It started with a cake making competition a couple of months ago. This took them a fair few weeks to accomplish.
Steve had to bake a cake one week, at the same time as several other people. Who ever won that week went onto the next round.
Guess what, Steve won his round! Way to go with my Lemon Coconut Cake.

I can't actually remember what he baked for the next round, it was a close call but sadly he didn't make it through.

A couple of weeks ago he informed me that the next competition was all about 'Soups'
So he has been wondering what he could do.
Now bear in mind that he isn't too interested in winning this round at all. Not too fussed on soups, so all he wipped up was the recipe for 'Mild Curried Kumara Soup' oh with a twist, because Steve can not do anything when cooking without a little twist added!
Although when you ask him what he put in it and can he tell you so you can recreate it....the answer is always NO, because sometimes he is not actually sure what it was that he put there!

So today, he took in his soup. Hoping that it was suitable enough for the competition but compared to others, hopefully not good enough to go forward.
Well blow me down, he is cirrently leading for this week.
Due to the nature of it being soups, they are doing 2 soups per day, rather than trying 3-4 soups in one day. So a scoring system has been created. He has to wait until the soups for Thursday have been scored, but currently he is leading this week!

I laughed when I called him to find out how his soup went! Because now, if he wins the week, he only has to come up with another soup to make in a few weeks time!

Anyone got an good soup recipes out there for him to use????

Boat Launching

My mother sent me this joke.

I don't own a boat, but know many who do!
I think they know what they are doing....?
__________________________________


I just bought a new boat and decided to take 'er for the maiden voyage this past weekend.
This is my first boat and I wasn't quite sure of the exact Standard Operating Procedures for launching it off a ramp, but I figured it couldn't be too hard.
I consulted my local boat dealer for advice, but they just said "don't let the trailer get too deep when you are trying to launch the boat".


Well, I don't know what they meant by that as I could barely get the trailer in the water at all!
Anyhow, see attached picture, and tell me what am I doing wrong??.

History

40 years ago today I was not even born!

I was a thought but not even a twinkling in my parents eye.

My parents lived in Southampton, England and on the other side of the world, or stars even, 3 guys were making history.........they were walking on the moon.

Yes that is right, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins were up there in the sky 'taking one giant step for mankind'

Another piece of history or rather geography was that at the moment Neil Armstrong took a step on the moon, then the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio was firmly cemented on the map as well.

Although it is amazing how many people do not know this town.

I have actually had the awesome privilege to live in this town, and given an extra special heart beat I would be back there tomorrow.

Why?.....I don't actually know, it just struck a cord with me and will stay with me for ever.

The city of Wapakoneta is within the Auglaize County of Ohio, it is situated on I75 at exit 111, just where State Highway 33 crosses I75. It is approximately 60 miles north of Dayton and 80 miles North West of Columbus.

It has a population of 9500 (2000 Cencus) and is originally an old Indian area. Most of the streets are named after Indians with the exception of the odd streets that are named after Neil Armstrong. Places like Apollo Drive, Lunar Drive and of course Neil Armstrong Drive.

Which in fact is where his parents use to live. In fact I have held a hose pipe with his father!

Every year in Wapak, they have a fun run around part of the city, to celebrate Neil's achievements. The year I was there, which I think was about 86 or 87, I got to do some marshalling for the fun run and my position to monitor was on Neil Armstrong Drive. It was a stinking hot day and his father had erected a hosepipe on top of a ladder at the edge of the street. This then allowed the runners to run through a spray of water as they ran past. So thoughtful.

My only regret from when I lived there was that I never managed to go to the Neil Armstrong Museum that is run by the Ohio Historical Soceity. All the kids I knew at the time, told you what it was like, because it was the local place to end up on a school trip at, but seeing as I never managed to get to High School there, I never got to the museum. This is something that one day I hope to put right.

So on this special day for mankind everywhere. When it gets dark tonight, take a quick glance up at the moon and think about what those 3 awesome men achieved all those years ago.

2 Weeks

Where have we been, I can hear you all call??
Well it has been the school holidays here in New Zealand and so we have been out and about.
Well in fact Ben is the wanderer this time.
The first weekend we went to the caravan, nice quiet pleasant time. On the way home we went via Grandma's house and dropped him off. He then stayed there for the next 6 days.
He had a ball.
Learnt to sew on buttons and even how to stay dry at night. So 6 days later he came back to us and now he doesn't wear nappies at night. In the last week we have had 2 minor accidents, but all is going very well at present and we are making a big fuss of him every morning.

When he had finished playing with Grandma, he didn't get to go home, because we had already shipped on over to the caravan for a week. Steve took time off work and we took Alex out of Daycare.
It was rather wet and cold at the caravan, but with old friends there and lots to do it wasn't that bad!
Ok so it rained a lot and the ground was very muddy, squelching under foot and full of water, but survivable if you had the right frame of mind.
Obviously we did, because we stayed till Saturday.
So today we are home, gettign ready for the week of work and school ahead of us.
You would never know that Ben has been away for 2 weeks, he is not bothered by it at all. Never once mentioned home and wanting to come back!

Not sure if that is a good sign because at almost 6 he is strong enough to be away from home or a bad thing because it looks like he has spent half his time away from home and doesn't care?

Oh well, he had an awesome school holiday, with lots to tell at news at school on Monday.

Smile

At the moment in New Zealand it is wintertime.

Although we are lucky enough not to have snow on the ground, it can get pretty cold here.

This, as everyone will know, can really get you down somedays, especially if it has been raining all day and the temperature has not risen at all all day.

I have a calendar in the toilet, not sure why, although it is pretty to look at.

It is an Anne Geddes one with lots of pictures of babies in poses that are so cute.

However I am in love with July's picture.

It is of a baby laid on rose petals and it makes me smile and feel so happy everytime I see it.

Not the greatest shot of the picture, I tried to find it online but to no avail, so had to resort to taking a picture of it myself and cropping it

Definitely a moral booster for the middle of winter!

School Holidays

Ben has gone to Grandma and Grandad's house.
Yes he managed to drink sufficient for my liking and now he is having a party with them.

Alex on the other hand is not quite sure what to do with himself.
He is at Daycare today, but yesterday he was not exactly himself. And he must have asked at least 4 times if Ben was coming home today?!

He is fine going to sleep at night in his room by himself. This is something I thought might have been a problem, they share a room, and he is staying in bed all night as well. Surfacing about 7am.

But he is definitely missing his big brother.
Not sure if he will manage until this weekend when we go to the caravan!

Boys Art

We have got to the stage in life with the boys where we are constantly getting art work brought home.

Everyone knows what I mean......you look at every piece and say all the right things but then you wonder "what the hell am I meant to do with it all now?"

We have treasure boxes for the boys and I do manage to keep some of the better pieces for them to view when they are older.

But I also love to have it on display so we can appreciate what they have achieved.

So, I copied an old friends idea, and created an art board in the dining room.

This board can now display any piece of art that we want to view for a while.

Then when something new comes along, we change it all over.

Ben also gets to display any achivement awards he gets from school there.

Works for us.

Blackmail

Well maybe it could be down loaded to bribery!

We are once again blackmailing Ben into doing something. No not medicine this time......drinking, not alcohol, just everyday normal drink.
He just doesn't want to drink!

We can send him to school at 9am and when he comes home at 5pm he has drunk all of 100mls.
Now in my book that is insufficient for someone to go over 6 hours without having drunk anything.

So we started to bribe him this week.....if he drinks sufficient, then he will get a star.
3 stars and he gets to go and stay with Grandma and Grandad next week (school holiday time), all on his own.
On a day that he doesn't get a star, then he gets no computer time.
This is big to him at present as we have a ball game on the computer called 'Peggle' that he is just loving. It is a super little game that both him and Alex are managing to master very well. In fact better than I am at times!

So even though I am trying not to make a big deal over all this, I still am trying to get him to understand that he does have to drink something during the day.